The Warsaw Uprising

Like most events of the past, the Warsaw Uprising in Poland exceeded its historical boundaries once the battle began to be waged on the field of history. A valiant, but doomed, attempt to free Warsaw from Nazi occupation, the Uprising began on August 1, 1944 and lasted two awful months, leaving the city in a heap of smoldering rubble, and over 200,000 dead. While the defeat of the Polish Underground was, for all intents and purposes, a fait accompli, in history and collective memory the truth of that struggle was contested for nearly fifty years, during and after Warsaw’s reconstruction. Why?

After the start of the Cold War, official memory of the Uprising had been appropriated by Poland’s Communist regime, under whose auspices it was savagely reinterpreted. It became, by turns, a criminal misadventure, a Nazi-collaborationist effort, a cry for Soviet liberation, a false memory -- in essence, whatever would both legitimize the new government, which entrenched itself after the Uprising, and discredit the old one and its many loyalists. In other words, it could not be what it ultimately was -- a moment of infamy for the Soviet Union, whose army stood on Warsaw's banks as the city burned, the better to rescue it once it had already been devoured.

There emerged in response a new resistance movement led by dissidents of all stripes – historians, writers, activists, artists, and especially filmmakers – all devoted to a singular purpose (which, in their view, was a continuation of the Warsaw Resistance): to reclaim the past and to tell it truthfully. At stake was both the collective memory of the wartime generation in Poland, which could be manipulated and corrupted, as well as the memory of the emerging generation, which could be altered or erased. As one may imagine, the odds they encountered were staggering. (The dystopian literature of the early 20th century offers a glimpse into the depradations, barbarism, and darkness behind the Iron Curtain). In Soviet-dominated Poland, as in the other Eastern bloc nations, a censorship bureau strictly regulated intellectual and artistic activity, while state-run media propagated the Soviet agenda on current and historical affairs. All attempts to diverge from the Party line were met with severe repercussions. Thus if the truth about the Uprising was to be sought and shared, dissidents would have to circumvent these structures, either underground, which was dangerous, or through oblique strategies, which demanded cunning.

Both channels were employed, but the use of the latter, i.e., the encryption of books, poems, paintings, songs, and films with veiled references, the deployment of symbol and metaphor, was much more common. A prominent example appears in Polish director Andrzej Wajda's wartime film, Canal (1957). In one of the final scenes, two survivors of the Uprising have been wading through the muck of the sewers, and they reach an exit grill on the bank of the Vistula. The last shot has them gazing at the other side of the river, depleted of all hope. No one, of course, could be in doubt as to who had been waiting so indifferently yet ravenously on the other side.

Control over creative output in Poland was alternately tightened and loosened as Soviet policy and leadership changed. By degrees, Poles had learned to distinguish imposed orthodoxy from wink-of-the-eye heresy in everything they read or heard. It was the persistence, though, of lies surrounding the Warsaw Uprising (and separately, the Katyn Massacre) that drove dissidents towards a more comprehensive and accurate retelling of the event -- an ambitious aim which seemed more realistic than ever during the Solidarity Movement of 1980. It was not, however, until the final convulsions of Soviet Communism had exhausted the system in 1991 that the historical record could finally be reconstructed -- and dramatically augmented. Censorship was abolished, state-run media organizations became independent, and state archives were opened. Like many other events in Polish history, the Uprising would undergo a transition from an event fraught with ideological distortion to the object of accurate historical representation, and the public at last was free to learn about it, or in many cases, to relearn it.

Dispatches: Remembering March 1968

As to the events of March 1968, I was in the eye of the storm, though I, like the rest of my peers, was oblivious to the political machinations and set-ups underlying the student movement. I was the classic representative and spokesperson for a spirit enslaved by communism, a national spirit, the Polish spirit—in pursuit of liberation from Soviet control, on the one hand, and on the other, freedom from the communism imposed on us by force.

I was in my fourth year of studies. One morning, on my way to a doctor’s appointment outside of the University, I picked up a leaflet on the ground in front of the library, a leaflet among many which someone had scattered like seeds. It was an announcement for a rally at 3pm that day, on that very spot in the courtyard, to protest the removal of a canonical play from the National Theatre (the play was removed for its incitement of anti-Soviet sentiment). As I returned from my check-up, I realized that all the streets leading to the university were blocked by militia squad-cars. Tension was rising.

The rally began with a protest in relation to the play, though immediately afterwards, we heard people shouting to each other to flee for the university buildings, for the militia had begun to attack.

We quickly rushed to a building and barricaded the doors. From the window I could see militia officers, not dressed in their regular uniforms but as workmen, beating students with batons and throwing them into police wagons.

Meanwhile, other schools were joining the student movement, and every day the movement was growing larger.

At the University I took part in a rally in the main auditorium, then in the departmental sit-ins, and in the marches through the Krakowski section of Warsaw; when threatened with police violence, we ran into Holy Cross Church.

But these are all minor details. Most important was the hope and joy we felt, that something would change, that we were fighting for Poland’s independence, that history was being made. The ability to express one’s hatred for the Soviet regime, thrust upon us against our will. And what’s more, the knowledge that we could express our deepest convictions without fear. I remember crying from happiness and pride, ecstatic that I could sing our national anthem in protest against the Soviet regime.

We belonged to the post-war generation, fighting for freedom despite our fear of the Stalinist repressions that so severely affected those of the wartime generation, our parents and grandparents.

In later years we discovered that, far from being agents of change, we were a bunch of dupes. The declaration of martial law in 1980, after the fall of the Solidarity movement, was the final blow to my ideals. After that, everything was an illusion.